Keeping Cesar Chavez’s legacy alive

Sunday

Apr 2, 2017 at 7:49 PMApr 2, 2017 at 7:49 PM

Joe Goldeen Record Staff Writer @JoeGoldeen

STOCKTON — Had he lived, Cesario Estrada Chavez — better known as Cesar Chavez — would have turned 90 years old last Friday. He died April 23, 1993. In his 66 years on Earth, he led a life of nonviolent activism bringing worldwide attention to the plight of farmworkers in an effort to improve their treatment, working conditions and pay.

Stockton community activist Valerie Mejia and several of her friends believe strongly that Chavez’s life is one to be emulated and shared with younger generations of Latinos as well as all Valley residents. And after more than a decade of organizing an annual Chavez commemoration, she has vowed to continue her efforts for as long as she is able.

“This is very important to me. Chavez was tired of being pushed around, tired of the poverty around him, so he did something about it,” Mejia said during the 11th annual Celebration of the Cesar Chavez Memorial and Citywide Educational Forum she co-organized Sunday in downtown’s Dean DeCarli Waterfront Square.

“We need to get out there and educate these kids,” Mejia said.

“We have to keep the legacy of Cesar Chavez alive. It’s important because Cesar Chavez fought the strike, the huelga, he started that for the Braceros. He started that for people that were coming from Mexico to work in the fields. But he also did it for people of color, for poor people. He made a way for me,” she said.

“Because he did it at a time there was so much racism going on right in California, I’m not even talking about the rest of the United States. But there was the riots in downtown L.A. In fact, when he first started, they killed a member of his group. He wasn’t from Mexico, he was from India to make a better life for his family. He was killed in the fields.

“There was a lot of hostility against these people. All they wanted to do was make better living arrangements for themselves, a little bit more higher pay. Sometimes they were only asking for a nickel, only asking for a nickel more,” Mejia said, pointing to the early struggles faced by those working in Valley fields and those attempting to organize them.

Mejia and Stockton businesswoman Frances Hernandez, who has operated Frances Beauty Salon in south Stockton for 40 years, organized the nonprofit Latinas for Social and Cultural Awareness in San Joaquin Valley. They created Sunday’s event together after Mejia had a revelation while on a panel at San Joaquin Delta College reviewing student scholarship essays on Chavez.

“Three or four instructors and myself were reading essays and we stopped and looked at each other. Every essay we were reading was on Cesar Chavez — the boxer. And we were just blown away. It was sad, it was very sad,” Mejia said, realizing at that moment an entire generation was unaware of the sacrifices of Chavez the labor leader and humanitarian.

Among the highlights of Sunday’s event was a traditional flag presentation that anyone who attended school in Mexico would recall. It involved a small youth drum and bugle corps called Banda de Guerra and two cadres of young women serving as honor guards.

“We’re known as Escolta Mexicana Benito Juarez,” said leader Martha Portas, general manager of Wing Stop on West Lane.

“I do this because I like to participate and work with the community, to be an example for young people,” Portas said.

Delta College student Ana Lourdes Ortiz, 20, led the band of volunteer musicians as young as 4. Banda de Guerra was started by her father, bugle player Demetrio Ortiz, who died four years ago, and Ana has chosen to continue his work in his honor.

“We play and promote Mexican culture. This is what they have in the schools in Mexico, just drums and bugles. So we import everything from Mexico — drumsticks, drums, even the skirts on the drums,” Ortiz said.

The young band leader, who plans on continuing her education to become a high school Spanish teacher, holds practices twice a week at St. Mary’s Catholic Church downtown. The group performs several times a year and has played at cultural events everywhere from Modesto to Sacramento and even in San Francisco.

“We teach them about our Mexican roots and traditional Mexican school culture,” Ortiz said, adding that it is important for her generation to know about Chavez the farm labor organizer. “Cesar Chavez did do a lot for the people working in the fields.”

— Contact reporter Joe Goldeen at (209) 546-8278 or jgoldeen@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/goldeenblog and on Twitter @JoeGoldeen.